Does you asd child brush their own teeth?

My kids are pretty young, 3 and almost 2 years old. Both diagnosed asd. I'm still using the baby toothpaste with both of them. My son will be 2 next week so I guess it's o with him. But I'm ready to move on to real toothpaste with my daughter. However, she likes to eat the toothpaste or suck it off the brush. So I don't want to switch the a toothpaste that's not safe to swallow. But at 3 years old, I feel she needs a stronger toothpaste. Anyone else with this problem?

Nate is 4 and we have tried everything to get him to spit it out. My other kiddos started being able to spit it out when they were about 3. Nate just sucks and chews on the brush...I also use a little adult paste in the morning and kids paste in the evening. Our dentist reassured us that he'd be fine :-)

My 3 1/2 year old son has had some dental problems.Â Our pediatric dentist says the force of brushing is far more important than the fluoride at this point.Â You can use a really tiny amoung of fluoride toothpaste (I generally use a tiny scrape of it - not anywhere near pea size).Â Remember, you're going to swallow a tiny bit even with spitting.

However, the pediatric dentist told me that the most important thing was to make sure to brush everything thoroughly - the fluoride is secondary at this point.

My DS will brush his own teeth, but it's not thorough enough.Â Our dentists have told us that they should have parents help brush until they can tie their own shoes (generally age 6 or so), so it's very normal to need help brushing at this point.Â As far as spitting out - my DS will try, but he's not very effective at it.

DS will brush, and spit.Â He's 5.Â It took him a while to get the hang of it.Â He is still BAD at brushing, and hates electric brushes.Â Once every so often I brush the heck out of his teeth while he gags through it, poor kid!

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Have some fucking compassion for the fact that I am facing my biggest fear.

Tyler turns 5 next week and he JUST switched over from toddler tooth paste to kids tooth paste THIS week. Â I bought it cause his first adult tooth is through (and he lost his first tooth yesterday!!!). Â

So for pretty much the first 5 years of his life he has used baby/toddler tooth paste. Â He went to dentist at age 2 and teeth looked good and then he went yesterday (I know, bad mommy, should go more often) and they said his teeth looked gorgeous :) (and has 7 more coming in!!!! and his 6yo molars!!!). Â So for us, toddler tooth paste was good to use for awhile. Â I agree, its the brushing action that is more important right now.

My ds is 13 and I still brush his teeth.Â This is how he wants it.Â He's been taught to do it and can do an OK job but after a couple cavitites that requred general anesthetic to fill, I'm happy to keep brushing for him for a while.Â He used to have a lot of sensory issues around brushing, especially about really getting into the back teeth (where the cavities were) so if he'd rather have me do it, at least I know I'm doing a good job.Â Our hygenist said that many parents of typical kids help them brush until about age 10 because little kids just don't generally do that great a job.Â

Jenny...we give Nate a teeny bit of just the plain old Colgate...the white mint flavor one....he seems to like the taste. Like Powell we just use a teeny scrap of it on his brush once a day and our dentist said that was fine.

I have to hold Marley down to brush her teeth Â She hates it and fights me. We recently got an electric toothbrush because her OT uses some sort of vibrating tool that she said Marley likes to chew on. That doesn't help much either. I've been thinking about using the finger brush that we have for our youngest and see how that goes.